Advice on Losing Weight Makes People Fatter and Sadder

People who eat emotionally are actually battling language patterns in the brain. The left hemisphere is competing with the right hemisphere. It's like sibling rivalry.

Did you know your brain is really 4 brains? Those 4 brains actually talk with each other. They learn from each other and then offer each other suggestions about how to interpret each life situation story. Once you learn how your brain REALLY works, you can use it to routinely connect favorably in relationships with any person, including yourself.

Your brain contains the equivalent of 4 living computer software programs. (I call them thoughtware programs because we activate them using thought.) Your brain's 4 quadrants communicate with each other using their own specific opinions or viewpoints.

Consider each thought you think as an opinionated story. Your brain's 4 opinionated viewpoints relate to efficient productivity, relating and cooperating with people, expressing creative ideas and accurately doing tasks. You tell yourself a story about each individual life situation in 4 opinionated story versions. Depending upon your preferred viewpoint, you choose to react or respond to one main aspect of the combined stories.

Often in less than a second, you think in individual "thought bits" or "story details". Your brain requests you to consider 4 story versions about each individual life event. Using a process of elimination, creatively, you choose "situation-appropriate story details" most meaningful and significant to you or, for business, your prospect or customer. Using these 4 views, you create conclusions about how to live your life. Sometimes those conclusions are missing bits of really helpful information. It is THESE conclusions that result in our living in mental and sometimes physical poverty. Knowing how to use your brain, you can focus on how to ONLY live prosperously.

As you read the following 4 ways the human brain thinks, see if you can identify your more dominant brain quadrant, also called your preferred thinking style. See if you can relate with at least one MAIN description that sounds like you. For example,

Lower Left Brain Quadrant

A person preferring to think from the lower left quadrant quickly processes information in the brain. This person speaks very directly, and in short, purposeful sentences. He or she wants to feel in control, likes to plan things out and follow that plan and relaxes when people GET TO THE POINT QUICKLY.

NOTE: Do YOU see yourself as a "get to the point quickly" type of person? You cut through red tape, and sometimes corners, to get things done! If so, you probably connect with people who think and act this same way.

Lower Right Brain Quadrant

A person preferring to think from the lower right quadrant, s-l-o-w-l-y processes information in the brain. This person looks for ways to get along with people. He or she likes taking time to get to know you and likes knowing personal details about you. This person wants to TEAM-PLAY, cooperate, to get along with and please people.

NOTE: Do YOU see yourself as a "team player - cooperative and caring, to get along with, people pleaser" type of person? If so, you probably connect with people who think and act this same way.

Upper Right Brain Quadrant

A person preferring to think from the upper right quadrant enthusiastically and relatively quickly processes information in the brain. This person wants to express creativity and do things in an exciting, animated, fun way. He or she may exaggerate for drama or effect. This person LOVES to feel appreciated and be the center of attention. This person uninhibitedly connects with people's enthusiasm and zest for life.

NOTE: Do YOU see yourself as an "expressive, creative, fun loving, enthusiastic" type of person? If so, you probably easily connect with people thinking and acting this same way.

Upper Left Brain Quadrant

A person preferring to think from the upper left quadrant factually (and slower than the lower left and slower than the upper right) processes information in the brain. This person wants to do things right the first time and is greatly concerned with accuracy. This person likes to hear ALL the details. A SLOW decision-maker, you may interpret the intense attention to detail as the person acting indecisive. This person will make a decision about life situations based upon a process of elimination.

You may hear this elimination process as complaining or flaw finding. He or she will consider the process as a way to get the most accurate, perfect, best thing at the least expense to him or her.

NOTE: Do YOU see yourself as a "get it right the first time, accurate, precise" type of person? If so, you probably easily connect with people thinking and acting this same way.

So, imagine haring all these thought patterns in communication with each brain quadrant. When it comes to emotional eating, you hear dialog like this:

"You're not good enough. Hurry up. I told you not to do that! Don't eat that. It's junk." and many other dictatorial and hyper-critical remarks. The passive brains want to "run away" or avoid confronting the left brain's dialog that focuses on completing tasks. The right brain hemisphere is people - oriented.

In Ned Herrmann's book, The Creative Brain, he explains that the left side of the brain easily dominates the right due to the language center. when the people-oriented right brain hears insults, guilt, criticism, and dialog designed to get tasks done efficiently and accurately, the right brain feels fearful or anxious. The emotional eating person winds up reacting instead of consciously responding. So, the way to help an emotional eater think differently about food is to first build self esteem and teach assertiveness.

I teach my clients that each "issue" is merely a story needing changes in the details to resolve it. In eating disorders, whatever they are, by changing the story so the client can "win" instead of feel threatened when acting assertively, the eating disorders quickly dissolve.

I've seen this change repeatedly through education to my clients about how the brain really functions. So, for example, when a client heads illogically for food, the first thing I ask her (I work with women in my practice) to imagine is that she IS good enough for anyone. The dialog goes like this, "I am good enough the way I am. If you'd like to see this task done differently, you can do it the way you'd like it done. Me being unable to read your mind is different than me being flawed."

The dispute most often that drives a person to illogically eat involves some task that ahs been "imperfectly done" in the mind of a person in a power position over the one developing or expressing eating disorders.

It's all in the way we see stuff that makes life such an adventure!

HypnoticBrainTalk